The official date of 1297 DR appears to have been an educated guess by the original publisher, TSR, back in the early days of the Drizzt story, in the 2nd
Edition of the Forgotten Realms (2E), before we had as many different books to get a better idea of Drizzt's entire life. However, with more books comes a
slightly different birth date.

Before Siege of Darkness came along, connecting the Drizzt story with the Time of Troubles (1358 DR), there were no clear indications of the date in any
of the earlier Drizzt books. The best anybody could do when the 2E of the Realms came out was to guess, based on what the powers-that-be needed to
happen in the near future, and how they wanted to integrate Bob's stories into the whole of the Realms. But there was a definite overriding push to get
specific with the timeline in the 2E. Because of a coincidence of the timing in the real world, the first RAS books to feature a clear date were actually
those of "The Cleric Quintet"--not the Drizzt books. As Bob once again picked up the Drizzt saga and began work on the mini-series "Legacy of
the Drow" and TSR commissioned a couple of drow-related sourcebooks, the Menzoberranzan Boxed Set and The Drow of the Underdark, someone
official (who???) picked the date 1297 DR as Drizzt's birth year and put that in the FRCS 2E. As Ed Greenwood has explained to me elsewhere, they
also decided that the date for the drow sourcebooks and The Legacy should be 1357 DR.

However, nowadays, since we can see that the events described in The Legacy take place just a few seasons before those in Siege of Darkness,
which is clearly dated as taking place in summer through early winter 1358 DR, because of the Time of Troubles, then we now know that The Legacy should
also be viewed as taking place earlier in the same year: 1358 DR. This effectively moves all of the earlier books one year forward in time, closer to
SOD and the TOT.

With all of this in mind, and after a lot of notetaking, my personal research indicates that Drizzt was probably actually born in early
1298 DR, say in late winter or early spring. That seems to fit the chronological details in all of the novels, best.

Of course, we're not talking about a bunch of big discrepancies, here. I'm just pointing out why they exist, at all.

Although in retrospect it seems that the officials of TSR picked Drizzt's official birth year somewhat arbitrarily, it's still clear that they came
awfully close! I have the benefit of more publications and hindsight, but they didn't have all this back when the 2E came along, which makes their
guesstimate very admirable. :)

<Comprehensive Chronology of RAS Forgotten Realms Works>"He is blunt, yes, particularly with criticism. He speaks of error without apology and without judgment, simply telling the honest truth and leaving it up to the offender to correct, or not to correct this situation. Bruenor never allows tact or empathy to get in the way of his telling the world how it can be better!"--On BEAST, and Bruenor Battlehammer; Drizzt Do'Urden (The Crystal Shard, Part 1)